Joshua ready for life in the spotlight

August 13, 2012 13:31 pm

Anthony Joshua is preparing to spend his first week as Olympic super-heavyweight champion munching on his favourite chocolate cake and resisting the potential pit-falls of his new-found fame.

Joshua completed Great Britain's best boxing performance at a Games in over 100 years when he scored a dramatic countback victory over Italy's Roberto Cammarelle to the delight of a roaring home crowd at ExCeL. But Joshua is adamant it will take much more than money to tempt him to leave the amateur ranks, and a professional future is the last thing on his mind.

Joshua said: "If fame comes I'm going to be okay with it, but I don't want to be hyped up and made out to be something I'm not. I'm not interested in the money. I want to go out and get a burger and a big chocolate cake, then I want to go back to my flat just to kick back for a few days and enjoy some of my mum's home cooking."

"I look at great amateur champions like Vasyl Lomachenko and how he just goes out there and gets the job done every time, and that's the kind of attitude I want to have."

Joshua knows if he does resist the lure of the professional ranks he could blaze a trail for the rest of the Great Britain team, almost all of whom will be approached by promoters in the wake of their performances in London.

While Joshua's fellow gold medallist, Hull bantamweight Luke Campbell, is most likely to join the paid ranks, others including Fred Evans may be tempted by changes in the amateur code which will allow for a degree of professionalism.

Joshua said: "The way the amateur sport is going, with the World Series of Boxing and the new Amateur Professional Boxing, it's very interesting and it could be the kind of thing that stops boxers automatically turning professional.

"You look at the Cubans, the Ukrainians and the Chinese and all their double Olympic champions and imagine how great that would be.

"If Great Britain can keep this team together, we would be incredibly strong in Rio in four years' time.

"We are in a position where we could dominate amateur boxing over the next four years."